


Breathless

by batyalewbel



Category: Babylon Berlin (TV)
Genre: Episode tag for either 2x07 or 1x15 depending on where you watched it, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 16:11:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyalewbel/pseuds/batyalewbel
Summary: “Will you carry me all the way back to the city?” she asks.“Of course,” he says.





	Breathless

**Author's Note:**

> Look, somebody needs to write more Babylon Berlin fic, it may as well be me.

_I remember thinking that it was all a dream. All of it. It was just another bad dream._  
_I kept thinking that the world was ending._  
_I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky._

_― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe_

Gereon Rath finds himself preoccupied by the conundrum that is Charlotte Ritter more often than is probably wise. The girl who seems so strong and unstoppable and yet, there is something ragged underneath. Something starved and breakable.

Gereon has Helga, the love of his life. He should be happy with that and his mind shouldn’t wander.

(A part of him wonders if he lost some of that love for her along with his calm and his steady hands. All of that got left behind in the trenches.)

(He wonders if he has grown to love the idea of being with her more than the reality of it)

And yet

And yet.

\---

He cannot lose another person.

A small part of him whispers that he can’t leave another person behind…

But Lotte inhaled water and clutched his hand so tight it might break until she stopped moving at all.

He screamed.

He raged.

He cried.

And then he came up to the surface and decided he wasn’t done yet.

 _She_ wasn’t done yet.

And so he finds a stake in the ground and uses it to pry out her arm and pull her out of the submerged car.

He swims them both out of the water as quick as he can, dragging her limp body to the shore.

She isn’t moving.

He had learned resuscitation long ago and it came back to him now.

He presses his mouth to hers and breathes air into her chest. Then he uses two hands to pump at her chest like a heartbeat.

Air in her mouth and then hands pumping her chest.

He does it twice, three times, four times…

Eventually he sits back and looks up. Tears mixing with all the damp on his face. Is it her that he’s mourning? Or just the fact that he’s lost someone else?

He looks down at Charlotte, too pale, too still.

Without even thinking about it, he traces the line of a lock of hair stuck to her forehead.

It’s her.

And he won’t give up on her.

He presses his mouth to hers again and breaths out before pumping her chest. He leans down to breath into her mouth again when she twitches and jerks, a fountain of water suddenly exploding from her mouth. She sits up to vomit still more water out, before falling back to the ground in a puddle.

And Gereon can’t help the smile. Watching her cough and spit is such an utter relief. He doesn’t even think as he pulls the girl into his lap and she lets him. Her breathing is still ragged but after a moment she’s resting her forehead on his arm.

And Gereon could cry from the sheer joy of feeling her breath on his arm.

\---

Of course they couldn’t just sit in the dirt, sodden and cold as they are.

She couldn’t stay there, that was for certain. So, Gereon picked her up and started walking.

“Gereon,” she had murmured in mild protest but he just shook his head and kept walking. Finally she rests her head on his shoulder and just looks up at the sky.

“Look, the sun and the moon are out,” she whispers and he looks up to see that she’s right. The moon is just peeking through the midday blue sky and the sun is out and shining.

“It happens sometimes,” he says and he can feel her nod against his cheek.

“Will you carry me all the way back to the city?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says, even if his arms are already tired and he wants nothing more than to stop and lie down himself. He _will_ do exactly that if he must.

Because of the way she noticed the sky at a time like this.

Because of the way her breath ghosts over his cheek.

Because a part of him is inclined to never let her out of his sight again.

**Author's Note:**

> So fun fact, apparently CPR was invented in Germany but wasn't ACTUALLY invented until 1956? I discovered that while writing this(Google said so). Also I have a lot of feelings about these two idiots and will singlehandedly fill this friggin fandom with some goddamn fic (even if it's all drabbles sorry)


End file.
